


Shimmer

by TerresDeBrume



Series: Orb & Shimmer [1]
Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Magic, Magic-Users
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 12:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12984543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: After Drummond gets shot, his life takes a turn for the wildly unexpected.





	Shimmer

**Author's Note:**

> So this used to be the prologue/first chapter to what will be the second (and probably last) installment in the Orb and shimmer series, but I’ve cleaned it up and I think it can make for a decent introduction to the universe…or, if anything, give you a little taste of what’s coming.  
> Takes place in a universe containing _Charmed_ -style magic powers, but honestly I’m going to take so many liberties with them you don’t have to know that show at all to follow the story here or in the upcoming fic.

 

Night finds him frozen in place in the cemetery long after everyone else has gone. The coffin is closed and buried, the time for goodbyes over and done with and his first love…oh, he shouldn’t think those words. All they do is deepen the burn of despair in his chest, after all, but what else does he have beside them? They are cold and comfortless, but they are his to keep and to cherish in place of the true thing. Perhaps, with time, the pain will fade. Perhaps he will look back on them and find them coated in fondness. For now, though, they merely hurt. They hold him there, nailed to the spot as he wishes he could forget the impending end of everything he dreamed of.

Gone are the rides in Buckingham’s gardens, the bright relief of a smile through the dullness of long journeys, the inane conversations that meant so much more than they said. The brightest spot of his future is gone, snuffed out with the whistle of a bullet, and the thought of it burns through his chest as bright as flame, fills him with red-hot anger that turns the air around him into a furnace.

 

Anger at the shooter grows into rage, into hatred, into fury…and fizzles out like a flame deprived of oxygen. What good will anger do? The man will be tried and found guilty. He will go to prison, or hang perhaps. It doesn’t really matter. The future he’d dreamed for himself, the love he thought he would grow into, the life he could have led: it will all be forever beyond his reach. He ought to accept this now. To move on.

 

To move forward.

 

Move.

 

_Move._

 

Shimmer.

 

Edward Drummond surfaces with a resigned sigh, feet almost stumbling on the protective cage laid over his grave. Crisp January wind whispers in the overgrown grass of his parish’s cemetery. The world, at this hour, is peaceful. Quiet and harmless in a way few things are. Here and now, it is almost as if nothing happened. As if he could simply walk up to his door and pick up the threads of his life. As if he could simply admit his body took some time to heal from what should have been a fatal wound and, by the time it was sufficiently finished for him to move, rising to his feet in the middle of service seemed, at best, frankly rude.

And yet…what is there, truly, to stop him from it? His parents, his brother all know of his difference. None of them understands it, and they would be as surprised as he was to find him still alive, but they would be pleased…wouldn’t they? His father, perhaps, would require some convincing to accept such a miracle. A prayer, maybe, or an exorcism of some sort, one of those Edward never dared to read aloud. Once that was done, though, he would rejoice. He would. Surely, he would.

 

It matters little, that they never quite knew what to make of him and his propensity for vanishing from one place to the other in a ripple of air. It matters little, that keeping the ruby-striped tender green of his Other Shape at bay was all he could do while a family friend slipped him into his funeral costume. His parents will be glad! His mother will. She will recoil, perhaps, at first. Flinch for some more time, maybe. Perhaps look at him with the same wide, wide eyes she wore when he warmed something with his mind for the first time. She will sign herself and pale, calling for Edward’s father in a faint voice. The image hurts, and Edward tries to keep it out of his mind, but it feels truer somehow, more familiar than the relieved faces and happy tears of his wishes. He sighs, wet air catching inside his throat as wishful thinking vanishes into thin air. Perhaps it would be better, for his family’s sake, to leave them to their grief.

Edward clenches his fists together, and tells himself he does not mind. It is nothing new, this distance between them. Leaving them will merely add a physical dimension to a divide that has been growing since he was a child for reasons he cannot quite voice, even to himself. He has found better support, since. Places where he was wanted. An office. A group of peers. A palace.

 

Hope breaks into Edward like dawn through a storm as he realizes exactly where he should go. Where he wishes to go. How did he not think of this soonerr? He can go to Buckingham, find Alfred and let him know! Finding his rooms without being seen will take some craft, but Edward can move from one place to the other with the nudge of a thought: he can manage it. He will manage it! He will go to the palace, find Alfred and—and—and what, exactly? Smile and tell him it was all a big misunderstanding? Show him the Other Shape he hasn’t managed to shake out of since the coffin closed over him? Even on the foolish assumption that Alfred doesn’t recoil from him…even supposing Alfred takes it all in stride and feels more joy than fear of disgust, what next? No doubt, he will have questions: how, and why, and when, and what. Edward has no answer for these questions, no more than his parents ever had. Can he truly go to Alfred empty handed and ask him to disregard that wild a deviation from the natural order of the world?

Alfred, after all, wanted him to marry Florence. The memory snakes around Edward’s throat with sudden viciousness, squeezes there until he struggles to breathe. _I can’t let you throw that away for some indiscretion._ An indiscretion. That was the word Alfred employed: an indiscretion. An insignificant incident, nothing important. Nothing that truly matters. What if Edward goes to him and finds himself the object, not of fear, but of irritation? An inconvenience, a fly to be swatted away and forgotten? No. No. Alfred wrote, didn’t he? He wrote, and signed with his christian name, too! _Yours, Alfred_. His exact words. _Yours. Alfred._ They weighed against Edward’s heart for the whole of his last day, so warm he couldn’t help but touch the letter from time to time, just to make sure he wasn’t about to set it on fire by accident. The words swam in Edward’s head all day long, whispering promises of untold joy so sweet it took all his willpower to keep his mind on the debate, surely they have to have meant something for Alfred, too. They have to. They _do_. But do they truly mean Alfred would be willing to associate with someone such as Edward?

In this form, he is even taller than the freakish height of his ordinary appearance. What would anyone make of an asparagus-green, seven feet tall freak with eyes to match the swirls of ruby skin crawling over his cheeks and the horns protruding from his brows? Edward has seen the face in his mirror often enough to know he wouldn’t trust a stranger that looked like him. No good Christian would. Alfred never struck him as particularly devout, but what if….Edward sighs. He tries telling himself Alfred wouldn’t. That he can go to him, share the whole story, and that they will find a way to make things work between them. The seed is planted, however, and doubt grows in him with the tenacity of vines in the pavement, and Edward’s determination falters.

 

What if going to Alfred only made things worse?

 

“Shouldn’t you be getting off this thing?” A voice asks in the darkness.

 

Edward startles away from the sound and, in the blink of an eye, finds himself ten feet away and peeking from behind a tree. Next to the freshly turned earth of his grave, stands a pale man with stringy blonde hair dressed in dark rags, who stands like a man who owns everything surrounding him. He doesn’t look surprised by Edward’s abrupt disappearance, turning his head this way and that almost lazily before he shrugs and says in a raised voice:

 

“I’m mer’ly trying to help, son. You looked pretty torn up there.”

“Who are you?” Edward asks.

 

The man doesn’t turn to Edward’s hiding spot, but the full moon gives just enough light to see his mouth twist into a knife of a smile. The edges of it quicken Edward’s pulse and make him wish, foolishly enough, that Alfred were here. There is nothing, however, that says Alfred would be any help, and Edward makes himself stomp on the thought before he starts wondering whether the man’s uselessness would stem from shock or disgust.

 

“I’m just like you,” the stranger says with a nudge of his foot against Edward’s grave guards.

 

There is a faint ripple in the air, almost a shimmer in the gleaming moonlight, and the stranger is right in front of Edward. He startles so hard he has to brace himself against a headstone or fall to the ground. Edward’s mouth hangs open while his mind races to try and capture the meaning of what he just saw. In the end, though, the only thing he can find to ask is:

 

“What are you?”

 

Then, when he finally starts to comprehend what the man’s action means for both of them, he amends:

 

“What are we?”

“Why, we are friends, of course,” the stranger replies. “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you everything I know.”

 

The man’s tone slithers into Edward’s ears, slick and cold at the same time. A part of him recoils at the sound, like a cat hissing at thin air. For a second, Edward considers listening to this strange instinct and finding his way to Buckingham Palace and to Alfred. The thought of being dismissed, sent away like an inopportune visitor brings him short, though…and besides, the blond man is the only person he ever met who seems to know anything about what he is. If Edward cannot go back to his old life, he might as well know his own self better, mightn’t he? Bracing himself, he stifles the hissing of his soul and follows the stranger into the night.

 

He doesn’t realize his mistake until it is too late to come back.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and review make me want to keep writing!
> 
>  
> 
> **Banner credits:**
> 
>   * _Author credit font:_ [Forced Square](https://www.dafont.com/forced-square.font)
>   * _Night sky texture:_ [By amdillon on DeviantART](https://amdillon.deviantart.com/art/Night-Sky-Texture-46880641)
>   * _Subtitle font:_ [Antro Vectra](https://www.dafont.com/antro-vectra.font)
>   * _Title font:_ [Candlescript](https://www.dafont.com/candlescript.font)
> 



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